


we tend to bruise easily

by liketheroad



Series: runs in the family [1]
Category: The Borgias
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-10
Updated: 2011-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-17 21:40:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/181428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liketheroad/pseuds/liketheroad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Juan is not Cesare's first love, but he is still his love. (Cesare/Juan, Cesare/Lucrezia)</p>
            </blockquote>





	we tend to bruise easily

**Author's Note:**

> reading this will likely require a willingness to engage in a healthy dose of historical-accuracy handwaving and possibly also suspension of disbelief. In that I am firmly committed to the belief that Juan just has a lot of angst and really Cesare loves him a lot, but that might not be your interpretation so watch out for that. Um, also watch out for... possibly disturbing themes? Potentially disturbing but consensual! Ahem.

When Juan was 11, he broke a horse that had defied the best trainers in the whole city of Rome. A stallion, half-wild, but beautiful, a prize fit for kings, or the pope himself.

The effort took weeks, and he often returned from the stables bloodied and caked with mud. One such evening, Lucrezia, who was only six at the time, asked Juan why he was going to such pains.

“Surely papa can buy you another horse? One that will actually let you ride him?”

But Juan just smiled, and said, “But this is the horse I want, sis. And when I have broken him, he will know by the scars I have given him and the wounds I have helped heal that he is mine, and I will know the same.”

At the time Cesare knew that their sister did not understand why this was so important to Juan, but she said nothing else to stop him, and in another week’s time, Juan had succeeded, and the horse belonged to him as thoroughly as he’d predicted.

He would permit no one else but Juan to approach him, let alone ride him, but for Juan he was the perfect stead; never once throwing him, fast and intelligent and strong enough to run at a full gallop for days at a time.

In the seven years since then, Juan has never ridden anything else.

\---

“Are you troubled, dear brother?”

Cesare turns from the window to look down at Lucrezia, his smile a faint approximation of the helpless grin he keeps only for her.

She takes several steps to close the distance between them, and leans up to brush her nose against the underside of his jaw. He shivers, just slightly, and she withdraws.

This time his smile is closer to what she has come to expect, but there is still something darker, perhaps wounded, in his eyes.

“He hates me,” he releases bitterly, his teeth momentarily grazing the bottom of his lip in punctuation.

“I do not think that is the case,” she disagrees, head tilted thoughtfully, the remnants of a playful smile on her own lips.

Cesare sighs and turns away from her once more. “I see no other explanation for his behavior,” he responds darkly, shoulders forming a tense line.

“Not jealously, perhaps?” she asks, leaning up on her tiptoes to rest her chin on his shoulder, following his eyes out onto the deserted courtyard below.

“And who does he have to be jealous of, my love?” Cesare asks softly, a question they both already know the answer to.

She bites his ear, hard enough to make Cesare gasp, and waits until she is safely out of his reach before answering, “Me.”

\---

Juan has been brawling again, in the taverns, and in the streets. It is unbecoming of his station, of their family.

But that is not what troubles Cesare. His younger brother has always been hotheaded, volatile. As quick to anger as he is to laughter, capable of switching between the two without warning.

No, it is not the violence Juan has wrought outside their home that concerns Cesare, but rather the brutality he has begun to practice within it.

Since Juan was 13, he has, from time to time and to varying degrees of regularity, shared Cesare’s bed. Cesare had at first considered this an extension of the other aspects of his brother’s education, like sword-fighting and strategy, that had already been entrusted to him. And so he taught his brother to be a fighter, and then a lover, but had never anticipated the two lessons becoming one.

And yet for weeks, perhaps months if he is honest, there has been no way to get Juan in bed aside from dragging him into it, no way to keep his brother still unless physically holding him down. No way to kiss him without their mouths filling with blood, no way to embrace him without their bodies covering with bruises and cuts.

He had thought, when first Juan met his usual advances with such violent fervor, that his brother had simply grown out of his youthful indiscretions, desiring the company of females, or at least non-relatives, exclusively. But Cesare is a soldier, for all his cleric's robes and regulations, and he can recognize the difference between a parry and feint as well as any true prince of state.

It does not seem that Juan wishes for him to stop - but rather, that he has finally decided to make Cesare _work_ for it, every inch of skin, every brush of lips. He loves his brother, and does not begrudge him the effort, but Cesare worries over the hostility between them in other moments, those outside his bedchambers, worries over the distance in Juan’s eyes when he looks at Cesare when they are out together in the daylight. And, most of all, Cesare worries about the bleak, empty look in Juan’s eyes, after, when he crawls naked from Cesare’s bed and steals silently away into the night.

\---

“There was a time when you loved me, was there not?” Juan asks, a bitter, mocking grin on his face.

“I love you still,” Cesare responds immediately, wishing the truth in his words would reach his brother’s ears.

Instead, Juan’s smile warps further into a grotesque parody of itself. “But not as much as you love her.”

Cesare closes his eyes, there is little the truth will do to help him here. But Juan will not stop, will not let him go, backed into a corner as he has him, and so eventually Cesare must admit, “No. Not as much as I love her.”

For him there is no one else. From the moment she was born, there has been no one Cesare could ever think to love as dearly as their sister.

Juan’s smile shifts again, his satisfaction smoothing some of the meanness out of it. A moment later, this satisfaction is replaced with a resignation which shows not only in his face, but in the rest of him as well - in his shoulders, his hands, in the way his entire body seems to be straining away from Cesare, even as Juan has not moved a muscle.

“And this I always knew,” Juan says, voice suddenly pleasant, light, as though they are sharing an excellent joke, or discussing an afternoon’s hunt.

Cesare raises a cautious hand towards Juan, but is still inches away before Juan jerks back, casting a withering look in Cesare’s direction. He lowers the offending hand, and tries to smile apologetically. It would help, of course, if he more rightly understood what he is apologizing for.

“But what I am to do now, brother, with this knowledge I’ve long had? Easy enough to forget, to dismiss, when she was just a child, a pretty slip of a thing, pure of heart and soul. But she is not so young anymore, not so innocent, and no longer is your love for her similarly innocent or pure. Am I to try and fight for you, when I know it is fruitless? Do I attempt to share your bed, knowing that I already have so comparatively little of your heart? Or shall I spurn you entirely, knowing my heart would break and my body crumble and decay without your administrations?”

“Please,” Cesare whispers, meaning to say more, but ultimately saying nothing, realizing there is nothing else he yet knows how to say.

Juan stares into Cesare’s eyes for a very long time, seeming to take his plea seriously, until, for a moment, it looks as if he will give in, will smile and let Cesare embrace him. But in another moment that forgiveness is gone, hardened and turned brittle. Juan turns sharply away from Cesare and stalks out of the room, his clipped footsteps echoing harshly behind him.

\---

“You mustn't judge Cesare so harshly, older brother.”

Juan is not often caught unawares, but his heart leaps with surprise when he hears Lucrezia’s voice behind him. He pushes away the maps he was inspecting, and smiles up at her obligingly.

“And why not?”

“Because he loves you, and because he is our brother. He cannot help the choices his heart makes. Is it not enough that he would still choose you to be his, would still claim you as such, regardless of whomever else he may be fated to love?”

“Fate, sister?”

“I can think of nothing else with the power to cause such a feeling.”

“Not God?”

“Perhaps God is just another way of saying fate.”

“Or perhaps not.”

She shrugs agreeably. “Perhaps not.”

“But I suspect what you mean, under whatever name, is to say that this is not Cesare’s fault, and so I ought to forgive him.”

She beams. “Exactly.”

Juan shakes his head, wishing, for a moment, that he really _could_ hate Cesare, or her, or better yet, the both of them. Instead, he loves them desperately, and knows that nothing they will ever feel for him could compare to what they feel for each other.

“Why should you encourage our reconciliation, sis? Is it not in your benefit to drive me away from his bed?”

Lucrezia tilts her head, a knowing look stealing across her face betraying a wisdom, an intelligence, far beyond her 14 years.

“If I love Cesare, then it is in my benefit to see him happy. And while I can perhaps make him happier than anyone else, I cannot do that alone.”

“And why should it be my duty to work as an under-laborer to Cesare’s happiness, picking away at the scraps of his unhappiness that your presence cannot quite dispel?”

“Because it is all that is left, and because it is Cesare, so you will take what you can get, as you always have done. As any of us would. He cannot help that we love him as we do, just like he cannot help that what he feels for me is more than what he feels for you. You cannot say that you love him if you do not love him for what he is and what he loves, even if that is not just you.”

“Then perhaps I do not love him at all.”

She smiles at him, far too knowing, once again, and simply says, “Perhaps, perhaps not.”

\---

“If given a choice, I would choose you, my love. And only you.”

“But you do not have that choice, Cesare, and neither do I. We must always share each other with the world. I will marry a prince and you will marry the Church, and in between, as there has already been, there will be many who come between us. I would rather share you with our brother than with a common whore.”

“You know, then.”

“Of course I know. I have always made it my business to know everything, have I not? Particularly where you are concerned.”

“You’re not angry?”

“How could I be?”

“There is - that is, _he_ is - more. What I feel for him is more. More than what I have felt for any of the women you may have seen in my bed, at any rate.”

“I know that too.”

“And still you do not object?”

“How could I, when I know you began it for me? Because you were waiting for me, and you needed something to help you be patient, something more than empty conquests. Those would never satisfy you, not with a heart such as yours, but Juan has been able to come close.”

“Perhaps it did start out that way, but, I fear... I thought I could control my own feelings. I did not expect to have to account for his.”

“Poor Cesare. Is it really so surprising that he should fall in love with you?”

“He has never been as... _sweet_ as you, has never sought out my attentions - my affections - the way you do. Only my... instruction.”

“Then perhaps that is because he believed that was all that was available to him.”

“And now?”

“I dare say he fears that there will be even less of you that he might call his own, perhaps none at all, once you decide I am of a suitable age.”

“Suitable?”

“Forgivable, perhaps.”

“Oh, my love,” Cesare whispers, suddenly pressed close against her, his lips almost brushing her cheek, “there will be no forgiveness, not for me. But I intend to make my stay in hell worth it, I promise you that.”

\---

“You were born to hate me, you know. Bred for it.”

“Another failure I shall have to atone for.”

“I only meant that it was never father’s intention for us to care for one another.”

“I know what you meant, Cesare.”

“He meant for us to be rivals, fighting always for _his_ approval.”

“And you think I am so easily ruled? That I would do anything - betray even my own brother - in order to gain his approval?”

“No, brother. I assumed only that his approval meant more to you than mine. And so I have long resigned myself to accepting your hatred along with your love.”

“That does not make you any less mistaken.”

“No. It does not.”

Without pause, Cesare grabs Juan by the collar, and proceeds to drag him bodily out of the room, down the long corridors and stairs to the dungeon that has long sat empty beneath their family home.

As predicted, Juan snarls and resists, but never enough to truly break Cesare’s hold, to falter his confidence.

Wordlessly, he shoves his brother against the stone wall nearest to them, twisting Juan’s wrists mercilessly as he clamps them in irons.

Once enchained, Juan’s body goes limp and pliant, mouth hanging slightly open, his expression distant and relaxed save for the sharp intensity with which his eyes follow Cesare’s every move, his every breath.

Cesare leans close, his mouth hot against Juan’s ear.

“You are correct in thinking that you are not my heart’s only, or truest, love. But you are mistaken if you believe that makes you any less mine. You are my brother, and my love, by blood and by my choosing.”

Juan laughs, something close to a snarl, and spits, “Prove it.”

And so Cesare does.

\---

It is midday, and Cesare and Lucrezia are idly playing cards in the sunlit courtyard. Lucrezia is beating Cesare terribly, but only because he is too preoccupied with making her smile to pay attention to the finer workings of the game.

They are laughing together over the joke Cesare has just told, or perhaps simply out of the pleasure of being together, when Juan comes into view behind them.

He stands, hands held tightly at his sides, something uncertain yet hopeful drawn together in his eyes.

Cesare opens his mouth, but finds he doesn’t know what to say.

The imprint of his fingers still show against Juan’s pale neck, his collar opened wide as if he wanted everyone to see. The thought pleases Cesare.

“Will you join us for a game, brother?” Lucrezia asks, light as air.

Juan’s fists clench, and then relax, and he smiles, first at Lucrezia, and then at Cesare.

“Yes, sister. I believe I shall.”


End file.
